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Entrepreneur
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: USA
Posts: 31,429
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Farm Animals
In a single year, more than 3 billion chickens, pigs, cattle, egg-laying hens, and other farm animals are raised in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana?the five states suffering the brunt of Katrina?s wrath. With widespread power outages, flooding, high-speed winds, and sweltering temperatures, animals in meat, egg, and dairy industries are adding to the mounting death toll.
Carroll County was hit hardest in Georgia, as a tornado spawned from Katrina devastated the community. Preliminary assessments in that county alone range from 374,500 to more than 500,000 broiler chickens. High winds flattened eight warehouse-like broiler sheds at a single factory farm, crushing the 240,000 chickens kept inside. At another facility, the tornado?s winds ripped away five chicken sheds, killing an estimated 75,000 birds.
Factory farming structures could not withstand the hurricane-force winds and tornadoes. Roofs blew off, and the structures simply crumpled to the ground in heap of metal. Already in Mississippi, one million pounds of processed chickens?and one million pounds of chicken manure?have turned the Mississippi Sound into what The Washington Post has called ?a huge vat of biohazards.? Mississippi-based Sanderson Farms, the nation?s fifth-largest broiler chicken company, was directly in the storm?s path. As of this update, Sanderson was unreachable via phone or Internet, but industry representatives are speculating that the company?s operations ?have been severely disrupted.?
Thousands of cattle in southern Louisiana are stranded in floods of salt water, and food is fast depleting. Officials are scrambling to organize transport of the cattle out of the area?and even the state?while working to deal with the many decomposing corpses of those who did not survive Katrina.
Widespread power outages throughout Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia wreak havoc in industrialized farming, as most animal factories are highly mechanized with automated waters, feeders, ventilation systems, and, in the case of egg-laying hens, egg collection belts. Without power, the sheds housing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of animals will simply shut down, leaving the animals inside to suffer severe temperatures without food or water.
"We are dealing with a calamity of monumental proportions,? said Pacelle. ?We will do all we can to reach and save every animal we can locate and rescue. And most importantly, we are here for the long haul ? whether it?s weeks, months, or even years.?
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